We come to the reading of God's Word. Deuteronomy chapter 8. All 20 verses. Hear the word of God. The whole commandment that I command you today You shall be careful to do that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give your forefathers. And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness, that he may humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandment or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna. which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothes did not wear out on you, and your foot did not swell these 40 years. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you. So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in His ways and fearing Him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs flowing out of the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper. and you shall eat and be full and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land He has given you. Take care lest you forget the Lord your God. by not keeping His commandments and His rules and His statutes which I command you this day, lest when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your hearts be lifted up. And you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and test you to do you good in the end. Beware lest you say in your heart, my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth. You shall remember the Lord your God for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may confirm His covenant that He swore to your fathers as it is this day. And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God. Let's pray. Oh, Heavenly Father, we thank you for this word. We thank you for your life-giving word, and we pray that you would bless it now to our hearts and us to your service and greater glory. In Jesus' name we ask it. Amen. are. We wrestle. We wrestle with entitlement. We're a very entitled generation. We think the world owes me. People in their 20s expect to live with a standard of living that their parents have worked a lifetime for, but it's not just the young ones. The old ones also feel entitled because, especially here on Long Island, Everyone has, and so why not me? And you can't help but look around and say, I'm falling behind. I'm not getting. I should have. But the temptation to entitlement faces us both at the top of life and at the bottom of life. When we're deprived, we say, I deserve better. Poor, pitiful me. And when accomplished, we say, I deserve this and more. In both cases, we focus on ourselves. On the one hand, what I deserve but didn't get. On the other hand, what I've earned and feel I rightly enjoy. So we move between lives of resentment and arrogance. Because of these unsatisfied feelings of resentment, or I should say entitlement, we feel grief and we feel poverty in the midst of historically unprecedented prosperity. And it affects our relationship with God. When we feel these things, we say to ourselves, He's withholding from me. He has promised me good things you will never want, and yet I look at myself and I'm wanting because I don't have, I'm not keeping up. You say His promises are failing and you might even fly into a first world crisis of faith. Is God failing me? Can I trust Him? And it affects our relationship with one another as well. When we're not keeping up, when we feel entitled and we're not getting, I'm failing my family. What's wrong with me that I can't provide for them what everyone else is providing? Or my husband is failing me. Or, I can't do these things, so my parents must have failed me. And it affects our relationships with one another. We can't even enjoy what we have received because we're mulling over what we have not. Now what we feel is one thing. I suspect it's not just me. We feel these things, but we know something else. What we feel and what we know are different things as Christians. We know that we don't deserve anything. Romans 3.23, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And as sinners, we don't deserve anything, not even the breath in our nostrils. And then the parallel, Romans 6.23. For the wages of sin is death, what we have earned, what we deserve is death. And so we know as Christians it's all grace, all that we have is God's gift. The other half of Romans 6.23, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. We know Christ is my sufficiency. I have all that I need in Him. And so having food and clothing, I will be content therewith, we say. And yet, we are not content. When others are getting and you are not, you feel quite discontented. And in a modern society with a growth economy, why should I be contented with little when I can have lots? But then as soon as you You don't say that, but as soon as that thought passes through your mind, you're horrified at yourself. What a horrible thing to say. It just doesn't sound right. It sounds proud. It sounds entitled. And so we wrestle with these emotions. Deuteronomy 8 helps us work through these complicated emotions. God has just brought Israel out of slavery in Egypt where they did not have much. They were in the desert, they were happy for the memory of leaks and things of this sort. Leaks. No, they were in slavery in Egypt and God is bringing them into a promised land. And that seems to be the end of the story. You've got suffering, you've got salvation, and then settling. The end, right? Why doesn't it end there? But it doesn't end there. God brings them into a land of plenty. Wheat and barley we see in our passage here, fig trees and vines, it's a fruitful land. And these are things he's promised. It is a good land, it's a gift from God, and it is a gracious gift. Well, all gifts are gracious, right? If it wasn't gracious, if it was somehow entitled, then it wouldn't be a gift, it would be a compensation of some sort. But it's a gracious gift that he gives them. They didn't earn it, and yet it's a complicated gift because the story is not over. And this is not the first time that God has promised His people, His image bearers, His human creation, plenty. Genesis 1.28, it begins there with the creation mandate. God says, take dominion over the earth. He creates the world and he creates a garden in the world and then he creates Adam out of the dust of the ground and then he puts him, having created him, he puts him in the garden and he says, take dominion over the earth, make the whole world like this garden, cultivate it. Unlock the wealth of the world I've just given you. Unlock its comfort potential. Take crude oil and make home heating oil, and high efficiency furnaces, and you don't have to live in a hovel, in a wasteland. He wants us, in this sense, God wants us rich. Don't quote me out of context. In this sense, As people He's put into a potentially rich world, He wants us unpacking, taking dominion of that world, unpacking its wealth and enjoying its wealth in the dignity of comfort and in control of this world. He wants us to enjoy the creation, but He wants us to enjoy it worshipfully, delighting in the glory of His goodness and His beauty in this world. But then what happened, right? That too is not the end of the story. You would think that would be the end of the story. What a good story. But the fall, right? Sin entered the world and dominion that God commanded became domination, selfish domination of the world. And rule, he told us to rule over the creation. Rule after the fall became rebellion. against God, empowered rebellion. So the children of Cain, what do we see them doing? We see them building cities. We see them forging metals. We see them growing things and making music. And they glory in these accomplishments as though they were simply their own. They don't worship God as they ought to. Though these are blessings from God, the metals and the music and the agriculture, they withheld worship from Him. Romans 1.21 looks back at this. Though they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him. God graciously gives and people proudly take as though they did it themselves. And we see ourselves in this. Imagine your dad builds a huge and prosperous company, a big corporation, right? And you have the same name as him. It's dad's name, Junior. and you apply for a job at this company and surprise you get hired and you thrive in the job and then you boast like you made it all on your own. You're a self-made man. I worked my way up from the bottom. I applied for the job. I got the job. I etc. Never mind you have his name, nevermind he built the company, nevermind as your mom and dad gave you your character, I mean part of it you bring into the world of course, but a lot of character shaping went on in their home and life skills that they imparted to you and opportunities they provided and this guy says I did all my, it's laughable, everyone in the company would be laughing as he struts around. With God, our dependence, of course, is even more radical than that. Even our breath comes from Him. Our life itself. And yet we're proud. But God doesn't say, you see, this is why you can't have good things. You just get proud. And then takes them all away. He doesn't do that. He continues to give good things, nice things. And he promises nice things to Israel. He gives them a promised land. He doesn't say, well, I want to do good by you, so I'm not going to give you any nice things. He gives them a promised land flowing with plenty and the potential for plenty. And yet he warns them as well. Look at verse 11 and following in your text. He warns them against the temptation that goes with this blessing. And in that way, it's a complicated blessing. So the story is not over with the settling. Take care lest you forget the Lord your God. And then verse 12, lest when you have eaten and are full, verse 14, then your heart be lifted up and you forget the Lord your God. Verse 17, beware lest you say in your heart, my power and my might, the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth. That isn't just the way it is. God gives, we receive, we forget, and our eyes are filled with the gift and our role in receiving the gift. And we say, we don't say outwardly because we'd be ashamed of ourselves, but some people do. That it's in our hearts. My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth. How much does that occupy our unguarded hearts? We lose sight of the gift and the grace. The gift and the grace. So how can we avoid this trap? God gives us good things. With those good things comes temptation. We're looking forward to the new year. There will be good things in this new year. We're entering the future, and God provides that future, and He provides good things in that future. How do we avoid this trap? Well, how do you appreciate any gift? We just came through a gift-giving season, didn't we? People give you a Christmas present, what do you do? You say, oh, cool, and then you turn your back on the giver and walk away. No, you don't, and you didn't, did you? How do you receive a gift? We train children in this, how to receive a gift, because in their wickedness, that they don't cover up, much of our wickedness we cover up, and we've been sanctified out of a lot of it, thankfully, but the kids, they just, oh, they just dive in, they tear the paper off, and their eyes are just filled with this marvelous thing behind the beautiful paper, and they lose themselves in it, and that's charming, but eventually we say, okay, now who gave you the gift? How do you receive a gift? You show suitable attention to the giver and why the gift was given. Right? And you show that you are unworthy of the gift. Oh, you shouldn't have. This is much too nice. Thank you so much, right? You're unworthy of the gift. And you delight in the gift, but as a way of delighting in the giver's love, right? So you don't just throw yourself into the gift. I've always wanted one of these, and then you disappear from the room. Well, thank you so much and then your joy over the gift is a joy in the giver. The giver's love. You show that the most important thing is the giver and your relationship with the giver. That's how you receive a gift. But I'm telling you what you already know. This is how we should receive good things from God. Every good things. When you pull on your socks in the morning, thank you God for these socks. When you sit down to eat, God tells us, what did Jesus do when he sat down to eat? And after giving thanks, he broke bread. This is why we thank God for the food we get. And so you notice in this passage, the emphasis on Israel's relationship with God and on God's love for Israel. It divides into two halves, verses 1 to 10 and verses 11 to 20. Verses 1 to 10 begin and end with gift. And go in and possess the land the Lord swore to give to your fathers. And then verse 10 and you shall eat and be full and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land. He has given you gift gift is the emphasis and then in both halves. verses 1 to 10 and verses 11 to 20, they begin with an emphasis on keeping God's commands. But he frames the injunction to keep his commands in the context of humility and communion. Look at verses 2 and 3. And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness, that he might humble you. And then verse three, and he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna. There was suffering in the wilderness, not because he was angry at them, but because he loved them, he wanted to humble them. And the humility is important to the communion that he had with them. Verses three to five, and he humbled them. He humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Don't get absorbed in the bread. Remember the Lord who speaks to you and he's speaking to them because he's in covenant with them. Your clothing, and the tenderness of His love. Your clothing did not wear out on you, and your foot did not swell these forty years. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, the Lord disciplines you. Yes, you suffered in the desert, but it was with the measured discipline of a father to a beloved child. Communion. with Him was the goal. This is God's goal for us in our redemption. This is what He wants for us in Christ. This is what Christ is doing in you now. He's humbling you and drawing you into closer and closer communion with Him. This is the goal. What does it say in Micah 6.8? A summary of the godly life? What does the Lord require of you, Micah 6.8? To do justice. To love mercy, not just to do mercy. To love mercy, to be the kind of person who loves mercy. And to walk humbly with your God. To walk humbly, there's humility. With your God, there's communion. There's the Christian life. God gave the promised land to Israel to provide for them in this world because you need food and you need shelter. And we have these bodies, these good bodies He gave us, and they need comfort. And so He gives them. He doesn't just give them. laid out riches. The riches they have to work for. He gives them the means to prosper by honest labor. You know, those figs and the wheat requires planting and harvesting. And then it's striking, he talks about the hills in which you can dig copper. Okay, digging copper, I imagine, is difficult. That's a hard day's labor. But in the end, you have copper and you can do neat things with that. You can make good pots and all sorts of things. He gives them the means to prosper. However, verse 3, man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. It reminds us of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus repeats this. Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothes? There's more to life than security and comfort. This is why after suffering, salvation, and settling, the story is not over because that's not the whole good. So what is there to life other than food and clothing? What does Jesus say? Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be provided for you. The kingdom of God and His righteousness. And in verse 3 here it talks about every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. The words that come from the mouth of the Lord are the gospel. The whole of the scriptures is the story of our salvation and the history of our salvation and what we need to know in order to be saved. In both cases, we're talking about the gospel. And the gospel we know, especially at the end of this Christmas season, is Emmanuel, God with us. The gospel is that God will dwell with men. What do you see at the end of the Bible, in the book of Revelation? The city of God, the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven and the dwelling of God is with men. There's the good news. We saw it in the burning bush. Pastor Miller preached on the burning bush the other week. There's the bush, it burned and yet was not consumed. Usually when fire touches bush, no more bush. But it was not consumed because it was a picture of God, who is a consuming fire, dwelling among His people, and yet we are not consumed because of His saving work in Christ, because of the gospel. And so God gives them a land of bounty for their bodies, but He does so, not for the sake of their bodies just, but because they are a people, He is reconciling to Himself. and for Himself. So God is not only announcing a promise of plenty, but warning them against the plenty, displacing the peace with God. He wants to dwell with them in peace in that land, but the goodness of the land provides a temptation to displace the peace with God. The riches are meant to be in the service of the relationship, and your riches and my riches, and we all have riches, are meant to be in the service of our relationship with God. Does the plenty He gives you displace the peace to which He has called you? Does the plenty that you want displace the peace He has promised? How does this displacement happen? Well, we misunderstand the gift as wages earned. I did this. We miss the giftedness of the gift. So verse 17, beware lest you say in your heart, my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth. It is easy to look at the labor of your hands and think the way Bart Simpson did in a particular episode of The Simpsons, where You know, they're a very godly family, the Simpson home. They always pray before meal, and they're always in church, and one day they let Bart say the prayer, and he said, dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing, amen. And you're shocked at this, and you go, well, of course, it's Bart. It's not exactly a role model, but Bart is not alone in this. Nebuchadnezzar, King Nebuchadnezzar says the same thing in Daniel. Where Daniel chapter 4 verses 29 and following we read, as the king was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, he said, is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence? By my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty. And what did God do to him? He struck him with insanity right there and he ate grass like a cow until he came to his senses. It wasn't just Nebuchadnezzar, Pilate was the same thing. Pontius Pilate in the presence of Jesus himself. Pontius Pilate said, do not know that I have authority to release you or crucify you. And Jesus said, you would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given to you from above. And Pilate was a man of the eyes, right? A man of his senses. And he looked with his eyes and he saw, I have labored, I have schemed, I have climbed, and Caesar made me governor. Why? Because I labored and schemed and climbed. And then I stayed in power because I was ruthless and clever in my dealings. And so I have myself to thank. And so he thought, well, I have political authority. I control the armies. Jesus is in my hand. It's right there to see. Jesus is in my hands. Whereas the truth was God gave him that ability. God gave him those opportunities. God suffered him to do all those wicked things. God established him in authority. And so Jesus says that your authority was given you from above. And so Jesus was not in his hands, Jesus was in God's hands. And it's the same for you and me with all good things. It is tempting to trust our eyes and to think that we have done all this ourselves and we have ourselves to thank or ourselves to blame insofar as we don't have things. And so to remind ourselves not to think this way. We thank God for our food, whether it's at home or at McDonald's or on the run. We thank God for our food to remind us that we depend on God for our food, our breath, and everything. And we give the Lord our Sabbath day because we know it all comes from him. And so one in seven is that weekly ritual. of reminding ourselves, which God gave us as a reminder, that everything comes from Him, and our tithe, that one in ten we give to Him as a way of reminding ourselves, because He gave us this reminder, that it doesn't come from us, it comes from Him. We depend not on ourselves, but on Him. It is a daily and weekly ritual, training us in the life of gift and grace. It was easier to see the world as gift and grace 300 years ago, when we were all poor and sick and frightened of everything. Before this fantastic industrial scientific revolution changed the world and unlocked this explosive wealth potential from the world, wealth potential, healing potential, everything. It's easier to see the world as gift and grace when everything was much more fleeting. But modern technology, growth economics, and the expectation of progress encourage us to see all these good things as the work of our hands and our entitlement as human beings. And yet success in the creation mandate is not bad. God said, take dominion over the earth. rule the earth and unpack it and He had created the world so far and He wanted us to continue the creation, the creative process by unlocking this wealthy world. So He gave that to us. He commanded us to do that so it couldn't be a bad thing. There's nothing ungodly in itself in comfort, in convenience, in prosperity and longevity. God gave us richly all things to be enjoyed, 1 Timothy 6. So what's the answer? God warned Israel and we need warnings too. Israel failed and we're failing too. We go from failure to repentance, failure to repentance. What's the answer? Keep better Sabbath, tithe more faithfully, more consistently thank God before your meals, Well, there's nothing wrong with those things. But God warned Israel with these words, and yet they fell into sin, into self-satisfied sin. And so what hope is there for us with vastly greater wealth to tempt us, vastly greater power over the universe through technology to tempt us and seduce us? The answer is right here in this passage. It's all over this passage. It's in the promised land. The promised land was not the fullness of God's promise. That's why the story of suffering, salvation, and settlement was not the end of the story. And then there was the warning, and the blessing was a complicated blessing. It was full of temptations. It was good, and yet Israel was not good, and so it was tempting for them. No, it's not the end. The promised land was not the answer because enslavement in Egypt was not their problem. It was a bad thing, no one can deny, but it wasn't the ultimate problem. That's why the story doesn't end. The promised land, of course, is Christ. You say, oh, here he goes. What do you mean, the promised land is Christ? Well, why shouldn't it be Christ? Everything else is Christ in the Old Testament. Everything points forward to Christ. Christ is the fullness of God's gift to us, and everything points forward to him. You think of Israel itself. God in Hosea 11 says, I called my son out of Egypt. Israel, his son, called out of Egypt, calls Israel his son in the Exodus, but then in the New Testament they refer to That same passage was referenced to Christ, whose parents brought him down into Egypt, and then he came up and says, I called my son out of Egypt. Christ is Israel. The lamb in the temple points forward to Christ. The temple itself points forward to Christ. Christ is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Christ is the temple. He is Emmanuel, God with us. A temple is where God dwells with his people. God dwells with his people in Christ. And so too, the promised land, the land of rest and security and plenty is Christ. All the promises of Christ are yea and amen. All the promises of God in Christ are yea and amen in Christ. He is our promised rest. He is our safety and our peace. As for riches, we read, God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Because you are changed in Christ, because you know God in Christ, your enjoyment of good things can and should be consciously worshipful. Whether it's your dinner, or driving, or air conditioning, or the latest phone, these are all good things. And they can be enjoyed and should be enjoyed worshipfully. Some of you have some nice cars. I, my first car was a nice car, a very nice car. It was a 1987 Toyota Corolla. I loved that car. And let me tell you, it was my first car and I was like, don't laugh, 28, 29. And every time I got in that car, I worshiped God. I thought, Oh, and especially when going around a turn, I consciously and overtly worshiped God. Thank you God for this car and that I can drive finally. But I did so because I knew Christ. Christ gave me the heart to do so and so I did so. And amazing food. Oh, we have nice food. We're not eating cabbage soup the way perhaps we would have done in years past. Cabbage soup and nothing else. Maybe a stone in there if it was a special occasion. I always eat nice food. But I work in the city and sometimes there's nice occasions. I get to eat at really fancy places. A few weeks ago I ate at the Capitol Grill in the shadow of Federal Hall down there. There's a bunch of Wall Street types go just hang out in there. But for me it was a special occasion. And I ordered, somebody else paid, the porcini rubbed filet mignon. Oh my. I worshipped that cow's creator with every bite. Why? Because I ate it at the foot of the cross. I ate that steak in the shadow of the cross, not just with this mouth that God gave me, sending it down to this belly God gave me, but with this heart that he gave me in Christ. And so enjoying the steak, enjoying the toast, enjoying the car, enjoying My socks, enjoying everything is a worshipful invent. Worshipful. This is the lesson of why we say grace before we eat. We thank God for our food and then we worship God in the eating of our food and then in everything else. With a heart humbled in Christ, worship God in the enjoyment of his gifts. So they are occasions for drawing closer to him in love. and not idols coming between you and God as they did for Israel back there in the promised land. And remember verse 10, verse 10 again from our passage. And you shall eat and be full and you shall not just eat and be full. It doesn't stop there. And you shall bless the Lord, your God, the Lord, your God. for the good land He has given you. Eat and be full and bless the Lord your God for the good things He has given you this year. Your God, because He has given Himself to you in Christ. Let's pray. Oh, Heavenly Father, You shower us with good things. You give us life and breath and strength. You give us eyes to see and ears to hear and all our senses to enjoy and father. We pray that whether we have little or whether we have much, we see it as your sufficiency in Christ and that we so draw near to Christ and know him more perfectly in this year so that our enjoyment of your good things will be more worshipful enjoyment and they will be occasions for us to fill our hearts, not just our bellies with these things, but our hearts with you. In Jesus' name we ask it, amen.